“What do you do when someone ghosts you?”, someone asked me recently, as I was talking about the importance of having lots of conversations. Unfortunately, this will happen. Every few years, I have a meeting set up (often by the … Read More
psychology
The dreaded vacation?
As a solo consultant, it’s easy to burn out. So many balls in the air, and all on you to keep them from crashing. Of course, you’d like to take a vacation. But is it really a vacation if you’re … Read More
Turn Zoom Meetings (and other content) into Evergreen Lead Magnets
One of the (many) challenges of solopreneurship is the feast-or-famine cycle of business development and project work, because there’s never enough time. Heaven forbid you might want to have a vacation in there somewhere. (After all, is it vacation if … Read More
Avoid the dreaded “just checking in…”
How many times do you get an email or phone call from someone “just checking in [to ask for money]”? How many times have you, knowing the critical importance of follow up, left an email or voicemail that started with, … Read More
The Scam Economy
Don’t you just love those messages in your inbox that start “I’m so impressed by your work at [Company] and I’d love to connect to find ways to collaborate”? Or: I’m not opposed to advertising. I’m not opposed to getting … Read More
Cask-strength positioning for solo consultants
AI is all the rage (and what can I say, I find it very helpful), but for many consultants, AI is just making difficult work more streamlined, instead of transforming the nature of the work. What can transform your business** … Read More
Authenticity is the currency
A lot of folks in marketing overuse the term “authenticity”, like it’s some kind of commodity you can fake, and thereby increase sales. But authenticity is precious, which is why so many people are trying to fake it. This goes … Read More
Complexity is the enemy
When we’re deep into our field, we sometimes get so deep that clients and prospects have trouble understanding. Think of a doctor describing an operation to another doctor, rather than to the patient. This is the curse of expertise. But there’s another form of … Read More
Everyone updates the fine print, but what about your website headline?
Happy 2025. Many of you probably updated the copyright notice at the bottom of your website to include the current year. (Although I am not a lawyer of any kind, let alone a copyright lawyer, my understanding is that you … Read More
Prep for 2025 and vow to do less
If you read and/or listen to a lot of business advice, the general idea is to do more. Not to say this is wrong (necessarily), but the main issue is that we don’t have enough time and/or focus to properly … Read More